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People would stop Ron Peterson, president and CEO for Baxter Regional Medical Center, in the street to tell him that the hospital needed to recruit a neurosurgeon.

As he started looking into it to see if it was feasible to get one, the hospital found out that Dr. Lucas Bradley, who graduated from high school in West Plains, Mo., was at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, getting trained. He had interests in coming to a small community.

The hospital connected with him and Bradley eventually signed a contract with the hospital three years ago. A neurosurgeon can evaluate and do surgery on the brain, the spine or certain parts of the peripheral nervous system.

BRMC’s Neurosurgery and Spine Clinic will be located at 310 Buttercup Drive, Suite A, according to a release, and it will open July 31. On a daily basis, Bradley said the clinic should be able to see 20 to 30 patients.

Traditionally, anyone who needed to get any sort of spine — whether it would be back or cervical surgery — had to travel to Little Rock, Springfield, Mo., Fayetteville or even Memphis.

A lot of those procedures will be done in Mountain Home, Bradley said, saving that drive. People won’t need to travel two to three hours anymore, which is helpful for people who are in pain before the surgery and sore after the surgery, he said.

When traveling two to three hours away to these larger cities and bigger facilities to have something done, there are several factors that come into play. The patient is in pain.

“It’s a long drive, and it’s painful,” he said.

They have to coordinate with someone to drive them usually if they’re unable to drive, he said. That involves taking a day off or canceling their activities. It’s not easy to find the clinics in a lot of these towns, he said.

Here in Mountain Home, he argued, they can drive themselves. Most people from the area already know where the hospital is.

“They can find the clinic very easily,” he said. “Those are huge benefits for the patients.”

Peterson said as the hospital tries to meet its purpose of remaining comprehensive and independent, it takes a look at what it means to be comprehensive. BRMC has more than 30 medical specialties already. But it always had that gap in neurosurgery.

“In my mind, I’ve always thought, you know, we don’t necessarily really want to get (into) neurosurgery because we can’t — the population that’s here really can’t support three neurosurgeons,” he said.

When looking at what’s a community-based neurosurgery program, then the hospital realized it could do it.

“We could do it with one surgeon,” he said. “That was kind of one thing that we looked at.”

The hospital also took into consideration the number of patients who actually go outside the area to get some kind of neurosurgery treatment. BRMC wanted to know if it could keep the surgeon busy, or remain stable as an organization.

During the process, Peterson said what the hospital tried to do, which was a win-win situation, was trying to meet the community needs, as well as making sure there was enough business. So that the hospital also meets its needs as an organization.

On average, there are about five to six patients a week who get referred out of the community to a neurosurgeon. He said he’s not saying that many people get surgery. But there are that many people who get referred to a neurosurgeon.